San Mateo at the center of school-renovation boom

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act may be winding down, but there's another economic stimulus taking place in and around San Mateo, where two school districts are spending hundreds of millions of dollars overhauling their facilities.

The San Mateo Union High School District and San Mateo-Foster City elementary district are engaged in a building and renovation frenzy fueled by voter-approved bonds. Similar activity is occurring throughout the county and elsewhere around the Bay Area, as districts seek to make their schools safe, technologically up-to-date and more energy-efficient.

Nowhere is the mid-Peninsula boom more evident than at San Bruno's Capuchino High School, which is undergoing an overhaul of around $45 million. The gyms and theaters are being refurbished, and workers are putting the finishing touches on a new building with 24 classrooms and two computer labs.

The money is coming from Measure M, a $298 million bond measure passed by voters in 2006. Measure D, a previous bond, paid for an earlier set of upgrades at Capuchino in the 2000s. By the time this latest project is completed in 2013, every building of the Spanish-style school will have been revamped.

"The school, inside and outside, has gone through a major transformation -- every corner of the school," said Assistant Principal Margarita Navarro.

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Each high school in the district is being renovated thanks to Measure M except for Peninsula, the district's continuation school. A newer bond measure -- the $186 million Measure O, passed in 2010 -- will pay for that.

District officials say the bonds were needed not because of state budget cuts but because of aging facilities, many of which were built more than 50 years ago.

The schools required basic physical improvements, but they also needed to be made into places where students can learn the skills they'll need to thrive in a technology-driven world. Hence the robotics lab at Aragon High School, the green-tech classroom at Hillsdale and the animation studio at Capuchino.

"We're transforming the schools into 21st-century learning places," said district Superintendent Scott Laurence. "When I was growing up, it was woodworking and auto shop and things like that. We continue to offer students those things, but we also have to give them the tools related to what's going on around them now."

Other Peninsula districts are pursuing the same goal. County voters approved more than $700 million in bonds since 2008 for schools' capital improvements. That includes San Mateo-Foster City's $175 million Measure L, which is funding major upgrades at Baywood Elementary and other schools.

And the construction boom is not limited to San Mateo County. In Santa Clara County, the Campbell Union School District just finished projects at Blackford Elementary School and Rolling Hills Middle School, using money from $150 million Measure G, and will construct new multiuse buildings at eight elementary schools over the next several years. And in the East Bay, Emery Unified School District will spend $80 million of the $95 million Measure J to expand Emery Secondary School into the K-12 Emeryville Center of Community Life.

Besides paying for new buildings, the money is putting people to work in the midst of a poor economy.

Greystone West Co., managing the Measure M projects, estimates the work has employed an average of 110 trades workers over the past five years. The San Mateo County Community College District calculates that its $468 million Measure A, approved in 2005 and just now finishing up, created about 3,000 jobs.

Contact Aaron Kinney at 650-348-4357.

School construction

Bond measures are fueling construction in the San Mateo Union High School District and San Mateo-Foster City School District. Construction is currently taking place at these schools:

San Mateo Union

Aragon High School, San MateoCapuchino High School, San BrunoHillsdale High School, San MateoMills High School, MillbraeSan Mateo High School

San Mateo-Foster City School District

Baywood Elementary School, San MateoCollege Park Elementary School, San MateoFiesta Gardens International School, San MateoFoster City Elementary School